Conclusion

Sophocles said that man had found his way to language, unlimited technology, and the courage to build a civilization, but he warns if we will fail to build our society or civilization grounded in  wisdom we will loose our way. Wikipedia defines Civilization as:

"any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment by a cultural elite. Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further defined by socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms specialization of labor, culturally ingrained ideology, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming as an agricultural practice, and expansionism."

As to Wisdom there seems a wide range of understanding as to its nature:

1. For Aristotle wisdom is the understanding of causes, i.e. knowing why things are a certain way.

2. In the Christian tradition Paul in Corinthians I, says there is both secular and divine wisdom. Prudence, related to wisdom is one of the four cardinal virtues and Aquinas considered wisdom to be the cause, measure, and form of all virtues.

3 The Buddha taught that to recover the original supreme wisdom of self-nature covered by the self-imposed three dusty poisons (greed, anger, ignorance) we should  turn greed into generosity and discipline, anger into kindness and meditation, ignorance into wisdom.

4. Hinduism wisdom means realization through right conduct and right living over an unspecified period one comes to realize their true relationship with the creation and the Paramatma.

5. In Judaism the word wisdom (חכם) is mentioned 222 times in the Hebrew Bible and  regarded as one of the highest virtues along with kindness (חסד) and justice (צדק). Both the books of Proverbs and Psalms urge readers to obtain and to increase in wisdom.

6. In the Norse tradition, Odin acquired wisdom through various hardships and self-sacrifice. He plucks out an eye for Mimir, guardian of the well of knowledge, in return for a drink from the well.

Note that wisdom is, in almost all cases, associated with an understanding rooted in the transcendent. Thus a materialistic secular society, such as modern America, is not only devoid of transcendental wisdom but actually eschews such wisdom.

Modernity slowly weakened spirituality, by design and accident, in favor of commerce; we have downplayed silence and reverence in favor of noise and constant action. According to Charles Taylor in A Secular Age, the reason we live in a culture increasingly without faith is not because science has somehow disproved the unprovable, but because the white noise of secularism has removed the very stillness in which it might endure or be reborn.

Such a society, in the words of Sophocles, is bound to "thrash about in issueless confusion."